SCOLOPACID^. 341 



lu former days the Ruff was a spring visitor in some numbers to the 

 fen-districts of England, nestiug and passing the summer in several of the 

 Eastern Counties ; but at the present time an occasional nest is all that is 

 to be found in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, and in Devonshire and in the 

 AV'est of the kingdom generally the Rufi' is seen only at uncertain intervals 

 in spring and autumn. Col. Montagu visited Lincolnshire for the purpose 

 of acquiring all the information he could respecting the habits of these birds, 

 and the methods of capturing and fattening them adopted by the feu-men, 

 and took several back with him for his aviaries at Kingsbridge. He has 

 described the battles the Ruffs wage in the spring at the breeding-season, 

 and the "• hills " or mounds which the birds selected for their encounters, 

 where they contended with one another like game-cocks, the combatants 

 rarely doing any injury to each other, and how they were netted around 

 these " hills." We have once or twice obtained a RufF in the autumn in 

 Xorth Devon ; one, which flew towards us and alighted by a small drain on 

 the Xortham Burrows, looked very like a Bartram's Sandpiper as it was 

 running on the ground, and as the birds have yellow legs we have sometimes 

 had them sent to us for the American Yellowshank. We have seen Ruffs in 

 Somerset near Weston-super-Mare, one day encountering a small flock in 

 September ; and in Col. Montagu's day they were not uncommon around 

 Bridgwater, Somerset being given as one of the English counties in which 

 they formerly nested. In its curious spring plumage, in which no two 

 males will be found with the colours of their ruifs identical, this Sand- 

 piper is very rare in the West of England, although some were shot some 

 yeai'S ago near Taunton, and Mr. Rodd states that he never knew of one 

 in this dress having been secured in Cornwall, 



Sanderling. Calidris arenaria (Linn.). 



A winter visitor, of irregular appearance, sometimes in vast flocks, to 

 some of our estuaries, arriving in August and remaining u)itil March. The 

 lale Charles Hall, of Topsham, with whom wc used to go gunning on the 

 Exe estuary, once killed seventy in two shots out of a large flock on the 

 mud-banks below Topshara. 



To be readily distinguished from the other smaller sand-birds through 

 the absence of a hind toe, the Sanderling is not a numerous species in 

 general on the Devonshire coasts. We have seen little parties as early as 

 2nd August on the Barnstaple river, having returned by thca from their 

 nesting-.staliuns in very higli latitudes, the old birds still retaining rufous 

 margins to some of tlie feathers ; but the flocks seen later on in the autumn 

 are composed cliieHy of young birds in their first plumage, in which the 

 colours are yellowish or greenisli grey, black, and white. Some are occa- 

 sionally obtained in the spring in the " Ruddy Tlover " dress of the older 

 ornitliologists, and some in the full winter jilumnge, l)ut tlio l)ir(ls seldom 

 remain with us long enough for its complete a8suni])ti()n. Autlicnticated 

 eggs of the Sanderling are rare in collections. Capt. H. W. Feilden took 

 a nest on 24th June, Ls7'>, in latitude y2' 3;j' N., containing two eggs, 



